Auction Draft - You Make the Whitelist (v4)No Deadball Players - No category may include players prior to 1920
This theme was originally created by flyingman. I am running the league, with his blessing.

The goal is to get 24 teams in this league, but if we can't get enough, we'll go to 16 or 20 teams.

Silent Auction
In the silent auction portion of things, you will have 1,000 credits to bid on 26 different categories. 25 of these are player categories, each containing a distinct group of players. The 26th category will contain a group of unique ballparks. Draft order will be determined based on who bid the most credits on that category. This means we will be running 26 separate drafts concurrently.

Determination of Player Categories
Once we determine how many teams will be participating in this theme (either 16, 20 or 24), each person will submit his player category. It must be something that can be searchable in the WIS search engine. For example, catchers with 38+ doubles in a season = 24 players. (min 20 games, secondary positions unchecked, season type = full)

A couple of rules in determining your player category. (1) Always set Season Type = Full, so we eliminate the players with multiple combined versions for the same season. (2) We will set a maximum number of possible choices for your category based on the number of teams in the league. For example, if we end up with 16 teams, your category should produce between 16 and 20 player choices. If 20 teams, your category should produce between 20 and 25 player choices. If 24 teams, your category should produce between 24 and 30 player choices. Some leeway will be given if your category goes a little over the max, if the commissioner feels that it does not ruin the spirit of the theme.

The spirit of the theme is to come up with a category that has some variability between the top players and the bottom players. If you submit a category with all crappy players, everybody bids 1 and nobody cares. We discovered last round, if you submit a category with only 1-2 good players and the rest crap, nobody wants to "risk" a big bid and get stuck with crap, so nobody bids a lot. So, it's a good idea to have more than just 1-2 usable players in your category. We want people to have to make tough choices on which categories to allocate the most bid credits to.

The commissioner has the right to request an owner to tweak his category or come up with a new category if he determines the category has too much overlap with another category or is somewhat of a useless category. Also, during the category selection process, the commissioner will be giving suggestions on what kind of categories are still needed in order to ensure there is a proper mix between position players, starting pitchers and relief pitchers.

Owners may change their category after submitting it.

Do NOT submit your category when signing up. We need to wait to see how many teams this league will have first. If we end up with 24 teams, I will submit the 25th category. If we end up with 20 teams, the first 4 owners (including me) who sign up will get to submit a second category. If we end up with 16 teams, the first 9 owners who sign up (including me) will get to submit a second category, which will be done after the 16 categories have been selected.

Ballpark
When you sign up, go ahead and submit a unique ballpark. All 16 (or 24) ballparks submitted will populate the ballpark category.

DraftsThe drafts will be run four categories per day for days 1-4 and 5 categories per day for days 5-6. There will be scheduled times, but I plan on starting all the drafts 4-5 days ahead of the schedule so most of the early picks will occur off the clock.

The category order (including the ballpark category) will be based on the cumulative dollars bid on each category. So, if everybody bids $1 on the ballpark category, then the ballpark draft will be last.

Trades
Once the season starts, there are no trades. However, trades will be allowed after the draft orders are determined. All trades must involve the same number of players (i.e., 1-for-1, 2-for-2) and each owner must still have one player from every category after the trade.

When you eventually provide your category, please include the total number of players in your group and either explain how you searched for your group or include a link to the search. This way I can make sure that the whitelist is as accurate as possible. I'll post the whitelist for each category in the Theme Leagues forum ahead of time, that way you can peruse each category and plan your auction accordingly.

ParticularsSalary Cap = None
Park = Via draft
AAA, WW, DH = No
Injuries = Turned Off
SLL = Turned Off
Ballpark: Nominated stadiums must have been in use during 1920 or later.
Trades = Not allowed after the season starts
Clones are allowed (but you obviously can't have the same version of a player from two different categories)

New: Division Alignment will be based on total salary of your 25-man roster. Highest salaries in the NL East, lowest in NL West.

In an effort to promote quick turnaround on the bids, any tied bids will be broken by earliest submission date (my submission date will default 48 hours from now - April 3rd at 10:30 pm).

I would like to avoid using any of the same player categories used in versions 1-3. Many of the categories (from version 1) will be impossible to use because they'll contain too many players, but please try to avoid using categories similar to those used in a previous version of this theme.

And finally, if you will not be checking the forums regularly during the draft, please do not sign up. In version 3, we had an owner constantly disappear for days at a time. Sucks all the enjoyment out of the drafting process.